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The Art of Google’s Street View Camera – Pete Brook, Wired Magazine

With billions of images stitched together in the street-view matrix, it is highly unlikely two artists operating independently of one another would happen upon nine identical scenes. On the other hand, in the huge dataset that is GSV, it’s understandable that artists would gravitate towards scenes that appeal to human emotion once they are identified and permalinked.

“In Tumblr and blog culture, authorship tends to get lost as interesting texts get blogged and reblogged without even the expectation of citation,” says Rafman. “I’ve had my entire blog stripped and reposted on someone else’s blog without attribution. In fact, you know you have ’succeeded’ on the internet when your work is circulated so much that you lose authorship. The notion of an internet ‘commons’ can be a two-edged sword.”

Rafman’s Nine Eyes and Wolf’s A Series of Unfortunate Events are the two most well-known and most circulated projects of the Google Street View (GSV) ilk. Rafman continues to add images to Nine Eyes, while Wolf has since ventured into newer sets with a geographical focus on Paris and New York.